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Comment by nyokodo | Hacker News Reader

> why it is that Amish(and similar groups)have succeeded where hippie type communes failed?

They manifest characteristics that enable stable communities. Sex within marriage, no divorce, marriage and sex for procreation, reliance on extended family and local community, no industrialization/urbanization, social isolation, religion as unifying principle. Hippy communities on the other hand tended to be built around sexual promiscuity or at least lack boundaries around sex and marriage, and subsequently suffer commensurate relationship/family breakdown. Not to mention that hippy communes are converts to agrarian life and when the going gets tough there’s no millennia of continuity to rely on but there is the memory of the city and the supermarket.

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Most of the (many) histories of hippy communes that I've read suggest a very different reason for their (typical) breakdown.

Most/many of them were founded by 1 (sometimes 2) relatively wealthy individuals who had the means (often familial) to acquire land and do the initial capital purchases necessary to get things off the ground. When/if these individuals lose interest in the commune, let alone leave, the implicit agreement that bound the community together starts to fall apart.

The communities that have survived for decades after being founded in the 68-75 period almost uniformly do not have this property. Twin Oaks (VA) is perhaps the prime example.

You could cite The Farm (TN) as a counter-example, but that would mostly be a diversion - The Farm survived because its founder (Steven Gaskin) never lost interest in or left the commune.

Ha. The reason so many stay is because it is more difficult than ever to leave.

Think about it. Technology has left these people a literal century-plus behind. The longer the Amish exist, the higher the rate of retention will be.

Furthermore, once you leave the Amish community, you are forever renounced by your family and friends. So you're left adrift without any support in a world that has left you behind.

This leads to the question you seem to have ignored. Is longevity itself a positive trait? If an abusive cult existed for hundreds of years, would you call it a success? Hacker News readers should place a higher value on innovation and less on blind faith in tradition, in my opinion.

https://abcnews.go.com/2020/amish-teens-tempted-drop/story?i...

I've lived next to Amish briefly and have friends that still live among them as non Amish.

Im not going to argue with you because its just going to be anecdotal, but I can tell you that the kids are not brainwashed if thats what you're referring to. The "shunning" is also exaggerated. It looks like you just watched "Amish mafia" on TV. Most stay Amish because it really isn't a bad system at all.

They use plenty of technology, its just approved by the community after careful consideration.

They have their problems but their focus on the family is vastly superior to most of the modern day degeneracy devoted to chasing whatever fleeting pleasure is popular at the moment. They will be around for a very very long time.

> Furthermore, once you leave the Amish community, you are forever renounced by your family and friends

This is not true. Watch Devil's Playground for counter-examples.

Your whole comment ignores seemingly the entirety of human history other than the (sanitized) history of Western Europe and the US.

> Sex within marriage, no divorce, marriage and sex for procreation, reliance on extended family and local community, no industrialization/urbanization, social isolation, religion as unifying principle.

All of these things have been present in the most war-torn and unstable societies (ex: much of the Middle East, some of the areas around present-day China and Russia).

> Hippy communities on the other hand tended to be built around sexual promiscuity or at least lack boundaries around sex and marriage, and subsequently suffer commensurate relationship/family breakdown.

There are cultures that existed for hundreds of years without the concept of monogamous marriage. Monogamy doesn't guarantee familial stability, nor does promiscuity. Domestic partnership (what we would call marriage) was a familial and economic relationship, not always a guarantee of sexual exclusivity.

The second-largest empire in history, the Mongol Empire, had an enormous amount of polygamy and sexual promiscuity.

The Ottoman Empire, Ethiopian Empire, and many other large (and long-lasting) empires practiced polygamy.

Even ignoring all of that, in the US, most people cheat on their significant others[1]. There's no reason to think that's a modern phenomenon, either.

1. https://today.yougov.com/topics/society/articles-reports/202...

> All of these things have been present in the most war-torn and unstable societies (ex: much of the Middle East, some of the areas around present-day China and Russia).

No, they have been condemned for females and tolerated for the more powerful.

The Mongol Empire is the last example you want to use about stability.

Regardless of whether sex was monogamous in most ancient societies, it was nonetheless ceremonialized, (somewhat) feared and (to the extent possible) regulated. The rules changed, but the presence of rules was consistent. It's not easy to find a culture that took sex as lightly as ours. But it's also not easy to find a culture that believed the Earth orbits the Sun. Ancient cultures often believed in some form of vitalism and had spiritualistic beliefs about the consequences of sexual activity. Those practices are not so easily mimicked by converts raised in the atomic age.

From your article:

>88% of women and 73% of men say kissing another person while in a monogamous relationship is cheating

It doesn't follow that most people actually have sex outside their exclusive relationships.

I would agree that the post you replied to places an excessive emphasis on sex. Hippie communes that I've examined often failed to effectively manage expectations regarding the work required and the quality of life that could be achieved.

My ancestors are Mennonites. I visited them in Missouri when I was fifteen. There is something appealing about their lifestyle, but after experiencing it for a couple of weeks, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't choose it.

> It's not easy to find a culture that took sex as lightly as ours

Classical Greece springs to mind. Possibly high Roman culture also.

Neither Greece nor Rome is a valid example. There were not the restrictions we're used to. But taboos abounded, particularly e.g. the stigma against cunnilingus. The Romans in particular gave us the phrase Quis custodiet ipsos custodes which was motivated by some noblemen's jealous guardianship of their wives.

> The Mongol Empire is the last example you want to use about stability.

Pax Mongolica was a thing.

As was the Yuan Dynasty.

The Pax Mongolica was more short-lived than many hippie communes! In fact the original Kaliflower Commune persists in San Francisco, some 56 years after its founding, while the Mongols were unified in the 1210s and fell into civil war (the Toluid Civil War) in 1260.

What a strange post. You realize those empires that practiced polygamy were brutally oppressive, yes? Women didn't so much have a choice as in forced into polygamy because they were treated as property and that's about as far away from the hippy movement as you can get when it comes to individual freedoms.

You think the Amish or the early Mormons treated their women better?

> You realize those empires that practiced polygamy were brutally oppressive, yes?

OP was talking about stability, not oppression. The Amish are oppressive, though not seemingly in a brutal way. Many societies with similar values to the Amish were also extremely oppressive.

Regardless, I gave examples of incredibly brutal societies that valued monogamous marriage and sex for procreation. My whole point is that these variables have nothing to do with whether a society is stable, but it's also true that they have nothing to do with whether a society is nice to live in.

Afaik, being married as an Amish can be quite oppressively too. No way out if your husband beats you. No divorce means exactly that - no matter how bad it gets, victim gets blamed.

> There are cultures that existed for hundreds of years without the concept of monogamous marriage.

Yeah, and then they died out.

Did any survive?

Polygyny still exists, and is still legal, in over 50 countries worldwide-most of those are Muslim-majority countries, but there are also some non-Muslim majority countries which have legal polygyny for their Muslim minority (e.g. India, Singapore). While Christianity traditionally opposes polygyny, it is popular among some Africans who mix Christianity with their traditional practices, and some Christian-majority African countries have legalised it due (in part) to pressure from those Christians.

I forget how many wives the Emir of Dubai has had-a few, simultaneously. From what some of his ex-wives have said, he’s an abusive husband, but Dubai sure survives. And while most marriages in Dubai are monogamous, I’m sure he’s not the only man in Dubai with multiple simultaneous legal wives.

Most polygamous societies were still predominantly monogamous - the majority of men had only one wife, multiple wives was generally something reserved for the wealthy elite. For example, even at the height of Mormon polygamy in Utah, only 15-20% of Mormon families were polygamous, the other 80%+ of Mormons (mostly) believed in it but didn’t practice it.

I think the argument is that putting constraints on individual sexual freedom promotes social stability in the long-run; the existence of constraints is more important than their precise details.

> Sex within marriage, no divorce, marriage and sex for procreation, reliance on extended family and local community, no industrialization/urbanization, social isolation, religion as unifying principle.

Do Amish women have the ability to attain financial independence? If not, I would add that to the list.

Do Amish men have that ability?

All evidence says no, they don't. Their financial situation is very tied to the entire community.

You think women not being financially independent is a stabilizing factor for communities? I can't tell if this is sarcasm or if your mindset is stuck in the 1800's just the like Amish's is...

Descriptive =/= prescriptive.

The Christian living aspect is definitely the major part of it. There are also over 100 Hutterite colonies, many that have survived for over a hundred years with new ones getting planted all the time all over SD, ND, some in MN and many in Alberta and nearby provinces each with roughly 100 people or so. Hutterites are essentially Amish who embrace technology for farming, manufacturing, etc. Their origin story is a bit different but they are both Anabaptist Christian sects with Germanic-language roots.

... and for those who don't know and are too lazy or busy to look it up, "anabaptist" means "adult baptism" - the idea that you did not need to be baptised as a child in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.

How many communes with this kind of "Christian living" have failed, and how many have succeeded? Since you know it's "definitely the major part of it" you'll surely have data beyond anecdotes, right?

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